Terms of Service

01Who we are

ChessDial is built and run by ChessBase India. The company you contract with is:

Legal name

ChessBase India 64 Squares Private Limited

CIN

U93000MH2016PTC272155

Registered address

301, Damji Shamji Trade CentreKirol Road, Vidyavihar (West)Mumbai 400086, Maharashtra, India

Customer support

support@chessbase.in

“We”, “us” and “ChessDial” mean that company. “You” means whoever is using the site — as a student, as a coach, or as an academy.

02What ChessDial is

ChessDial is a marketplace. Coaches and academies list themselves, students find them and pay to be put in touch, and the teaching itself happens directly between the two of you — over a call, online, or in person.

We are not the coach. Coaches and academies on ChessDial are independent. They are not our employees, agents or partners, and we do not set their syllabus, their ongoing rates, their timings or their methods. The session itself is an arrangement between you and them.

What we do is narrower, and we would rather be precise about it than sound reassuring:

• Every listing is read by a person before it goes live, and again after an edit. We check that a profile is coherent and plausible — not that every claim on it is true.
• A blue tick means a name matched a government ID. Where a coach or academy sends us an identity document, we check the name on it against the name on the profile. That is an identity check, not a background check, a character reference, or a judgement on how well they teach.
• Ratings come from students who actually booked. A review can only be left by someone whose booking went through ChessDial.
• Achievements, titles, experience and student counts are self-declared unless a profile says otherwise. FIDE ratings and titles, where shown, are read from FIDE’s own published data.

We do not supervise sessions, and we cannot guarantee that any coach will suit you, turn up, or be any good. What we do guarantee is set out in section 8: if a coach you paid to reach never gets in touch, or never shows up, you get the session fee back.

03Your account

You sign in with Google. We do not issue passwords, so keeping your Google account secure is what keeps your ChessDial account secure.

• You must be 18 or over to hold an account.Chess coaching is often for children, and that is expected — but the account, the payment and the contact details must belong to a parent or guardian, who books on the child’s behalf and is responsible for the arrangements they make.
• The details you give us — your name, phone number and email — are passed to the coach you book so they can reach you. Give us details that work; a coach who cannot reach you is not a coach who failed to deliver.
• One account per person. Your account is yours to use, not to share, sell or transfer.

If a parent or guardian arranges sessions for a child, they remain responsible for supervising those sessions and for deciding what contact with a coach is appropriate. We are not in the room, online or otherwise.

04Listing as a coach or academy

Anyone can apply to list. Nothing appears on the site automatically. When you submit a profile it goes into a review queue, a person reads it, and only then does it become visible to students. Editing a live profile sends the changes back through the same queue — the old version stays up until the new one is approved.

What you are promising us

• Everything on your profile is true and about you: your name, your location, your fees, your experience, your titles and your achievements. Do not list someone else, and do not list a coach who has not agreed to be listed.
• You are legally allowed to teach and to accept payment in the place you are listed in, and to hold whatever registrations or clearances that requires. We do not verify this.
• You own — or have permission to use — every photo you upload, including photos of students.
• If you take bookings, you will make a genuine effort to arrange the session, and to arrange it within 7 days of being paid.

Identity verification

You can send us a government identity document — Aadhaar, PAN, a passport or similar. We use it for one thing: checking that the name on it matches the name on your profile. Profiles that pass carry a blue tick. Documents are stored in a private bucket, are never shown to students, and are described in full in our Privacy Policy.

Your location on the map

If you drop a pin, we do not publish it. The point students see is your real pin moved by a fixed, secret distance of up to about a hundred metres, drawn inside a circle roughly the size of a city block. A student can tell which neighbourhood you work from; they cannot read your address off the map. Your real pin is visible only to you and to our reviewers.

Taking yourself off the site

You can unlist your profile at any time from your dashboard. Unlisting stops new bookings; it does not cancel a booking already paid for, and it does not end an obligation to a student who has already paid to reach you.

05Booking a demo session

A booking on ChessDial buys you one thing, immediately: the coach’s or academy’s own contact channel, plus their commitment to arrange a demo session with you. There is no calendar to book into. You get in touch and the two of you agree a time.

What a booking gives you, exactly:

• One channel, not all of them. A coach nominates how they want to be reached — email, phone or WhatsApp — and that is what is revealed.
• For an academy, one centre.An in-person academy booking names one of that academy’s centres, and reveals the contact for that centre. It does not reveal the whole chain.
• Access for 14 days. A revealed contact stays on your bookings page for two weeks from the booking.
• The right to review. Having booked is what lets you rate that coach or academy later.

Who teaches the session

When you book an academy you can say which trainer you would prefer, and the academy will see it. It is a preference, not a reservation. The academy assigns a trainer at its own discretion, based on your level and who is free. Being assigned a different trainer than you asked for is not grounds for a refund, and you agree to this at checkout before paying.

What is not included

The fee covers the introduction and the demo session. Anything after that — a course of lessons, a monthly retainer, tournament travel — is a private arrangement between you and the coach, at their rates, on their terms. We are not a party to it, we do not collect money for it, and we cannot help if it goes wrong.

Booking your own listing

You cannot book yourself, and you cannot use bookings, reviews or the activity feed to inflate your own profile. See section 12.

06Fees and payment

The price of a demo session is set by the coach or academy from a fixed ladder of tiers. The figure on their profile is the total you pay — the breakdown appears on the checkout page, and nowhere else.

Session fee

90% of the fee, before tax. This is the coach’s or academy’s share, and it is the refundable part.

Platform fee

10% of the fee, before tax. This is ours, it is what keeps ChessDial running, and it is non-refundable.

GST

18%, added on top of the fee whenever you are in India — wherever the coach or academy is, and whichever currency you pay in. We collect it and pay it to the government — it is income for neither of us. A booking paid by a student outside India is an export of services and carries no GST.

Payment gateway charges

Borne by us, out of the platform fee. They are never added to your total.

Currency

A listing in India is priced in Indian rupees and paid through Razorpay, unless you are booking from abroad, in which case it is US dollars through Stripe. A listing outside India is priced in US dollars through Stripe for everyone.

The total shown at checkout is the whole of what you pay. Nothing is added afterwards, and we do not store your card or bank details — the gateway handles the payment and we only ever see a reference to it. If a booking is refunded, the GST charged on the refunded part goes back with it.

Every listing is paid: a student books a demo session to reach a coach or academy, wherever in the world they are. What differs is only the currency and the rail the money travels on — see payouts.

We can change the tier ladder at any time. A change never re-prices a booking you have already paid for — each booking keeps the figures it was made with.

07Payouts to coaches and academies

What that means in practice:

• Money clears 7 days after the session is marked complete — the day the student’s window for reporting that it never happened shuts. You start that clock yourself by marking the session complete on your dashboard. If nobody marks it, we mark it 14 days after payment, so the clock always starts and a booking can never sit unpaid for ever.
• Rescheduling starts the clock again.If you put a new session date on a booking you had already marked complete, that booking goes back to being an upcoming session: the student’s old window is thrown away and a fresh one runs from the new session. That is the honest trade — the student keeps their protection, and you are paid 7 days after the session you actually taught rather than the one you did not.
• An open dispute holds the booking until the dispute is decided — decided against you, it is refunded to the student and never paid out; decided in your favour, it goes back on the payout track and is picked up by the next run.
• We need somewhere to send the money. In India, your PAN and either a bank account with IFSC or a UPI ID. Outside India, your taxpayer identification number and the email address on your PayPal account. If we do not have them when the run is built on the 8th, those earnings are held back and roll into the next run — held, not lost.
• Payouts outside India start at $10. Below that your earnings stay with us and roll into the next run rather than being sent — a transfer that small costs more in fees than it carries.
• A run that cannot go out rolls over. Whatever is held back for any of the reasons above stays yours and is added to the next month’s run.

Coaches and academies in India are paid in Indian rupees. Everywhere else we pay in US dollars through PayPal, and the listing is priced in US dollars too. Money does get converted on its way from the student’s card to your PayPal account, more than once.

If you are in India and a student outside India books you, that booking is priced and charged in US dollars and paid out to you in rupees. We convert it at the rate our payment processor actually gave us on that payment rather than one we choose, and fall back to our own reference rate only when the processor has not reported one yet. Until the run is built, the rupee figure on your earnings page is an estimate at today’s rate.

What you earn through ChessDial is your income and declaring it is your responsibility — we do not file on your behalf. Where Indian law requires us to deduct tax at source from what we pay you, or to collect tax at source on what you earn through the platform, we will, at whatever rate the law sets for that payment and that person, and your payout arrives net of it. What we deduct or collect is not a fee we keep: it is paid to the Indian government against your own tax identity, it appears in your own tax records, and you set it off against what you owe or reclaim it when you file. We will give you the certificate or statement for it wherever one is due. In India it is deposited against the PAN you gave us, which is part of why we cannot pay you without one. The GST charged to students in India is a separate thing: ours to collect and remit, and never taken out of your share.

Outside India we are obliged to withhold on what we remit, and the documents that establish where you are resident for tax are what let us apply the lower rate your country’s treaty with India allows — without them we must withhold at the higher default rate, so we will ask for them before the run is built rather than after.

If you are owed money and want to know where it is, write to support@chessbase.in and we will tell you plainly.

08Problems and refunds

If you paid to reach a coach and the session never happened, you can report it from your bookings page and get the session fee back. You have 7 days from the day the session is marked complete, and we email you on that day with the closing date in it. You do not have to wait for that email to act: if you have heard nothing at all, you can report a problem from 7 days after you pay, by which point the session was due to have happened. And if the coach reschedules a session they had marked complete, your window starts over from the new one.

The grounds, the amounts and the timings are set out in full in the Refund Policy, which forms part of these terms. In short: non-delivery is refundable, disappointment is not. A coach who turned up and was mediocre gets a two-star review, not a reversal.

We decide disputes ourselves, on one question — did the session happen? — and we tell both sides. A coach who does not respond loses by default. Our decision is final as far as the platform is concerned; it does not take away any right you have under Indian consumer law.

09Reviews and ratings

Only a student who has established contact through ChessDial can review a coach or academy, and only once per profile. Reviews are published without your name attached, and we do not let anyone — including the coach — work out which reviews are yours.

Write about the coaching. Do not use a review to:

• post a phone number, an address or anyone’s personal details;
• abuse, threaten or defame someone;
• settle a score unrelated to the session, or repeat something you have not experienced yourself.

We do not edit reviews to make a coach look better, and we do not remove one for being unflattering. We will remove a review that breaks the rules above, and we may remove ratings we believe were bought, traded or posted by the coach.

Some profiles also show reliability figures — how often that coach actually scheduled, and how often a dispute against them was upheld — calculated over the last 90 days and only once there are enough bookings for the number to mean anything.

10Notable students

Coaches and academies can list students they have taught. A claim stays marked unverified until the student themselves confirms it, through a single-use link we send them.

• Only list a student you actually taught, and describe your part in their chess honestly.
• For a student under 18, the confirmation comes from a parent or guardian, and the contact details we hold are the guardian’s. We hold no contact details for under-18s.
• A student can ask us to take their name off your profile, and we will.

Ratings shown next to a student come from FIDE’s published data, never from what a coach typed.

11Your content

Your profile, photos, bio, achievements, reviews and messages stay yours. By putting them on ChessDial you give us permission to store them, show them to other users, and use them to promote ChessDial and the coaches on it — no more than that, and only for as long as you keep them on the site.

You are responsible for what you upload. If you do not hold the rights to a photo, do not upload it.

12What is not allowed

Using ChessDial to do any of this will cost you your account:

• Faking bookings or reviews. Booking your own listing, arranging bookings with friends to lift your stats, or paying for reviews.
• Routing around the platform fee. Publishing your contact details in a place designed to be read for free — your bio, a photo, an achievement title, a review — so students can reach you without booking.
• Harvesting.Scraping profiles, automating contact reveals, working around the anti-bot check, or collecting students’ or coaches’ details to use or sell elsewhere.
• Impersonation.Listing yourself as someone you are not, claiming a title or a FIDE ID that is not yours, or uploading someone else’s identity document.
• Harassment or harm. Abusing, threatening, discriminating against or endangering anyone you meet through the site — a student, a coach, or our staff. Anything involving a child that crosses that line will be reported to the authorities, not just moderated.
• Attacking the site. Probing it for vulnerabilities, overwhelming it with traffic, or trying to reach data that is not yours.

Found a security problem? Tell us at support@chessbase.in before telling anyone else. We would much rather hear it from you.

13Suspension and removal

We can unlist a profile, refuse a listing, reverse a payout, or close an account where we reasonably believe these terms have been broken — or where a listing is putting students at risk. Where we can give notice first, we will. Where a student is at risk, we will act first and explain afterwards.

Closing your account does not wipe out what you already owe, and does not cancel a refund already due to a student.

You can stop using ChessDial whenever you like. Unlist from your dashboard, or write to us and we will close the account and delete what we are not required to keep — see how long we keep things.

14Our responsibility, and its limits

We take responsibility for running ChessDial properly: reviewing listings, holding money for the dispute window, deciding disputes fairly, and refunding what the Refund Policy says we will refund.

We are not responsible for the teaching. We do not promise that a coach will suit your child, that a session will improve anyone’s rating, or that a coach will behave well. Those are between you and them.

Where the law allows us to limit what we owe you, our total liability for anything arising out of a booking is limited to what you paid us for it. That limit does not apply to anything that cannot be limited by law — including our own fraud or gross negligence — and nothing here reduces your rights under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.

ChessDial is provided as it is. We keep it running as well as we can, but we do not promise it will never be down, never lose a search, or never show a stale figure.

15Changes to these terms

We will change this page as the product changes. The date at the top always says when. For the booking terms specifically — the ones you tick at checkout — we keep a version number, currently 2026-10-v6, and record against each booking which version was accepted. A booking is always governed by the version in force when it was paid for.

If a change materially affects money already in the system, we will say so directly rather than leave it to a diff on this page.

16Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of India. Courts in Mumbai, Maharashtra have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of them — the same jurisdiction as the rest of ChessBase India.

If a clause here turns out to be unenforceable, the rest stands. If we do not enforce something immediately, that is not us giving it up.

17Grievances and support

Two ways to reach us, and both land with a person:

• Email support@chessbase.in — put your booking reference in it if you have one.
• Use the Feedback button, which sits in the bottom corner of every page on this site. Tell us how to reach you and we will get in touch.

For a grievance under the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, write to the support address above or to the registered office in section 1. We aim to acknowledge within 48 hours and to resolve within a month.